


Hands Behind Your Back (Please Do Not Touch the Artwork)

by younglemonade



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Bellas - Freeform, Comedy, F/F, Romance, bechloe - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglemonade/pseuds/younglemonade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course it's Stacie who notices first. Beca is about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, and even if her toner wasn't visible from Texas, Stacie is a connoisseur of repressed attraction.<br/>It's just a matter of waiting for her fellow Bellas to cotton on, and then denying absolutely everything. </p>
<p>(The one with the girl gang and the not-so-covert Operation Bechloe that everyone totally knows about)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. By Stacie

**Author's Note:**

> I know there's probably a thousand stories just like this one (I've never read any, but I'm sure they're there), but I wanted to write it anyway.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stacie retired from match-making years ago with honours, but something about those two makes her want to revisit the biz in that trashy, lock-'em-in-a-room-together kind of way.

There are three things in life that Stacie Conrad is, to be frank, really fucking good at.

The first is aeronautical engineering, the second is three dimensional nail art, and the third is her ability to spot sexual tension from the moon.

So far, middle school and college have been the highlights of her life. The former, because even E! columnists can't gossip like a thirteen year old and her girl gang, and the latter because no one does repressed attraction quite like college A Capella girls, if the last few weeks are anything to go by. Sure, she misses her girl gang (Sophia works at a salon, now, and Ally is racing in Formula One while Alexandra is pacing it to Harvard), but so far Chloe and Beca are proving more entertaining than even the most adventurous Italian soap operas.

Stacie finds them fascinating, because they're like two solutions of an acidic and basic pH, neutralising each other in the best way possible. With Chloe around, Beca seems to have fewer hard edges, and the redhead seems a little more vulnerable through all her sunshine when the tiny alt girl rocks up.

She's had her eye on them since Aca-Initiation night (snooping while under the influence of alcohol has always been a treasured hobby of Stacie's), and they've managed to add a lot of chemistry to her otherwise maths-oriented college course.

It makes her eyebrows raise and her brain buzz and she can actually feel herself being forcibly tugged back into the match-making biz. And not just the classy, Oscar-winning game which requires 200 moves carried out with delicate precision and a squad of dedicated assistants (another shoutout to her girl gang who used to be her team back in the glory days), but the trashy, heavy-handed emergency mission kind of match-making, which generally involves locking two people in a room together until they either make out or combust.

Interestingly, Chloe is the one who's difficult to get a read on. Stacie likes Chloe, she was the one who convinced her to audition for the Bellas at the Activities Fair (she was sold at the descriptor pitch of "the tits"), but a person with few boundaries, spacial or otherwise, which makes it hard to tell if she's got a massive toner for Beca, or if she's just being her usual touchy-feely, rainbow-filled self.

It's Beca, boasting emotional walls three feet thick and two stories high, who stands out to Stacie like a STOP sign. Somewhere, in between a healthy dose of alternative style and a few kilos of raw musical talent, whoever designed Beca Mitchell totally and completely forgot to give her any means of effectively concealing her glaringly obvious crushes.

Part of Stacie (the less scheming, more boring part) feels a little sorry for Beca, as she suspects that this incredible ineptitude stems from Beca never having had a proper, bone-burning, star-seeing crush before, and that she simply has no way of knowing how hopelessly unsubtle she is.

Stacie, however, knows exactly.

The keen eye that zeroes in on cute boys (and girls, should the fancy take her), errors in equations and cheap karaoke bars doesn't fail her now.

She sees how Beca's usual smirk drops off her face and a blush stains her cheeks when Chloe comes to help her with choreography from what appears to be a rather unnecessarily close range. And how Beca stuffs up a few easy moves after that, even if she was doing fine before Chloe walked into the the room.

She makes a note in her mind when Beca looks like she's going to go into cardiac arrest under that precariously preserved veneer of indifference when Chloe throws her a wink.

She remembers how Beca runs a mile whenever someone so much as breathes in the vicinity of her personal space, but just looks pleased with herself when Chloe slings an arm around her waist.

Stacie spots the hand-holding and the half-smiles and how Beca lights up the same way when either Chloe or music enters a room. It's the scientist in her that can't keep from documenting the evidence, recording it in her brain to support her eventual conclusion.

She's never really fallen in love, it's true. Stacie has had probably at least four different attractive people's share of hook-ups and flings, and that's exactly the way she likes it. Stacie's got her eyes set on freedom and NASA, and she's never really met anyone who makes her heart race in a way that would get her to reconsider on that. Sure, maybe one day she'll make a baby Stacie as her gift to the next generation, but for now, she's just happy to be topping her class and singing her way through college.

But that feeling that she's never quite got around someone - she can see it in Beca. In how her lips twist up and she sits a little straighter when Chloe is there. The alt girl would probably strangle Stacie with a Bellas scarf if she ever said it out loud, but Beca's puppy act is stupidly adorable. She's starting to notice it in Chloe, too. Lighter eyes, bigger smiles, longer hugs that are arguably vertical snuggles. She hasn't even seen Tom around since Hood Night, and it's the little pieces like this that make a puzzle into a picture.

Her big fear is that while Stacie can see more signs than Ace of Bass when they wrote that goddamn song, neither of those two will. That they'll let this connection they have sit untouched, until it becomes that big regret, the "what if" from college they think about at 3am five years from now.

And if there's one thing she learned from that eighth grade science lesson where she got her eyebrows burned off when she left her solution unattended, it's that you should never, ever ignore chemistry.

So, since they're friends at all (and because helping out with other people's love lives is her first and truest love - sorry, engineering), Stacie decides she's going to work some magic. But for this operation to be a success (an honest-to-God, no "what-ifs", roll over at 3am in five years to see the other one lying there success), she's going to have to get herself a new girl gang, and hopefully the scarf tied around the strap of her satchel means she's already got one.

If they haven't already caught on to this situation, she has no doubt that they will before the pitch pipe blows for their Regionals show.


	2. By Jesse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd be lying if he said parts of their story didn't seem like the perfect movie in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the update took so long, my bad. Obviously, I've decided to expand from just Bellas to a range of characters.

Jesse's always been a sucker for a good romance movie.

He'd happily bury himself in a nest of mysterious pasts, unlikely affairs, star-crossed kids and happily ever afters. He, as Beca once so eloquently put it, "totally lives for that fairytale crap".

So it hasn't taken him that long, really, to work out that he'd stepped out of his parent's car on Orientation Day and right into a real-life summer blockbuster.

And God, is he discovering that love stories can be rather more interesting in the high-stakes environment of Real Life. Sure, he didn't land the lead role like he'd always dreamed, but the wise-cracking best friend was certainly integral. It was his job, as he'd told Benji, to "get the girl to get the girl".

If only the girl he was supposed to be helping would wake up and smell the instant cinema classic she was living and breathing. He's not going to win any Best Supporting Actor awards unless Beca can get her shit together.

He really should have expected that the whole journey from "their eyes met across a crowded Activities Fair" to "Hey, Jesse, will you be my best man?" would take a little longer than 2 hours and 16 minutes of HD montages accompanied by an epic soundtrack.

Then again, he's never been one to dwell on the reality of it all, because reality totally sucks. Exhibit A: Beca being more oblivious than an _actual dead person_.

Over the time they've known each other, from his initial (by initial, he means literally two days) attempt at romance that was speedily shut down ("You're cool and all, but there are aspects of your anatomy I find deeply unappealing. By parts I mean literally almost all of it. Wow, that sounded more offensive than I meant. I just - ugh - gay. Very gay. We cool?") to their awesome-as friendship, he's learned that there are exactly two things that blow up Beca's walls and hurl her into this other dimension where she wears her happiness on the outside.

The first is music, of course. If it came down to oxygen or her headphones, Jesse wouldn't bet any money on air winning out. Nothing can get into Beca's veins like a beat; he's witnessed first hand how a song playing on the outside seems to thrum in her insides, too. He never thought he'd meet someone who loves music even more than does, and he's super glad they're best friends.

The fact that Beca would fade like Marty from Back to the Future without her iPod was completely apparent from the very first day they met each other. Working out that elusive second solute that made the Beca Solvent react hadn't taken that long either, but he'd watched and waited, just to be sure.

He's on his way to Beca's dorm now, actually, for an Official Attempt at broaching the rather volatile topic of Chloe and what exactly the equation of Chloe + Beca equals.

Mentally, he organises his showcase of back-up for the inevitable "We're just friends - totally platonic - oh my god - nope - what makes you say that?" moment.

And because Jesse's Jesse, and he can't turn off the iMovie function in his head, he compiles what he's got so far into a rough movie layout, swirling on imaginary film reels in his mind.

 

**Scene 1: [following inciting incident, scene introduces Best Friend to the main plot of the film]**

_Beca stumbles over the edge of a box of records he's left on the floor, too distracted by her phone to either notice or care. He's not sure which._

_"Hey," he says, waving cheerfully, but not going in for a hug. He's not about to try that again for a long while._

_She starts, glancing up at him, and that's when he realises she's got this grin the size of Canada, the one he only ever sees when she's got an incredible mash-up burning in her eardrums. Yet her headphones are around her neck, strangely silent. His spidey-senses are totally tingling._

_"What's going on? Did David Guetta drop a surprise album? Is T-Swift hitting up Barden on tour?" he smirks._

_She glares, only half-succeeding as she appears unable to fully drop the smile from her face. "Dude, we swore we'd never speak of that again. I was super drunk."_

_"Two beers is not 'super drunk', Beca. And even if you were, that does not explain how you knew all the words."_

_She waves him off. "Whatever. And no, nothing's happened. I'm just texting Chloe, that's all." She says it like it's no big deal, like it should be a tiny blip on his daily sonar._

_But in reality, a series of klaxons are reverberating through his brain, and even though he couldn't explain why at this moment, part of him knows that this is, like, huge._

_So instead of letting it go as he normally does, he nudges her (physically and verbally) about it, and it takes what ordinary Beca would undoubtedly consider an embarrassingly short amount of time for her to completely cave._

_By "completely cave" he means, of course, that she practically trips over herself telling him all about the redhead from her A Capella group, going on some awkwardly mumbled rant that's a mixture of nervousness and pride._

_Beca pauses for breath, and he takes it as an opportunity to say, "She sounds really cool, bro."_

_"She is," Beca replies hurriedly, as if concerned that Chloe's coolness was somehow in doubt, and forgetting to pull him up on his use of the word 'bro'._

_She then seems to suddenly remember she's supposed to be a steeped-in-existential-darkness badass, and hurriedly adds, "or, you know, whatever. You'd like her, Jesse. She's into all that cheesy crap, like you. Happy endings and shit."_

_The eye roll coupled with a slightly mocking smirk that usually accompanies her comments on his (excellent) cinematic taste is mysteriously absent. In its stead is a half-smile, faraway-look combo that he feels should be scored with some instrumental crescendo._

 

**Scene 2: [a montage, indicating development along the passage of time]**

_Even though he's never met Chloe, he starts to become surrounded by her through all the little pieces of the other girl that Beca seems to collect into herself._

_He hears Chloe in the way she hums Titanium when she thinks he's not listening, even though she's tuned in to easily two thousand new songs since that one dropped._

_He sees her when a ladybug lands on his arm and Beca almost shouts at him to hold still so she can SnapChat a picture of the tiny creature to the redhead ("Since when do you have SnapChat?" / "Shut the fuck up, Jesse. I like it cos it creates the illusion of me being social without having to put in any effort." / "If that's what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night. Add me, I'm swan-spiels1.")_

_He mentally high-fives this A Capella genius girl when Beca sighs before asking him to summarise the plots of "these movies" (it's a list of ten, carefully written on a piece of paper and folded as tiny as possible) because "the Bellas" liked them. Sure, Beca, because he's totally fooled by that codename._

 

**Scene 3: [an introduction of two characters with the express purpose of furthering the secondary plot of the film]**

_"Jesse?"_

_He bumps his head on a shelf of vinyls (ouch) as he swivels around to see Beca standing awkwardly in the doorway of the radio station, a tall, beautiful, red-headed someone by her side._

_"Hey there, Beca," he says, trying to project an outward cool because he's not really sure how she wants to play this, but he's totally prepared to wingman until his grave. She gestures a little self-consciously to the girl beside her._

_"This is Chloe, the co-captain of the Bellas. I've mentioned her to you."_

_"Sure, yeah, I remember," he smiles, because it would be kinda hard to forget when their most frequent conversation topics were music, Chloe, "I don't like movies", Chloe, LA, the station, Chloe, classes, Benji's magical exploits, and lastly, but by no means least, Chloe._

_Chloe flashes him a grin. It makes him feel a little bubbly, and in 0.2 seconds he can understand why Beca seems to like her so much. She exudes happiness and charm as if she's trying to power New York City, and it's hardly surprising Beca's looking at her like if someone offered her a free ticket to see the Mona Lisa right now, she'd tell them to fuck of without a glance or a thought._

_Chloe disappears to class not long after that, but Beca still acts a little dazed after that, so he gives her some space and quiet to help her re-establish that "I don't smile at puppies" vibe he's coming to understand she needs around everything._

_Except maybe a girl currently sitting in her senior Russian Lit class who he desperately hopes is sparing a thought for his alt best friend, too._

 

**Scene 4: [featuring secondary characters as elements of the underlying supporting plot begin to come together]**

_They're at an aca-party, and Jesse's been put on what Beca likes to call_ Friend Watch _. Basically, this involves throwing Beca a glance every now and then, to make sure the "disgustingly social atmosphere" hasn't made her all awkward and uncomfortable. If she's drowning, the general idea is that he'll swoop in with a ready-made excuse and air-lift her out of there. Jesse scans the crowd for his tiny bro, on the dot for his ten minute check-up. He smirks when he finds her standing closer to Chloe than any known platonic conversation could possibly demand._

 _He feels a tap on his shoulder and turns slightly off-balance (_ Friend Watch _does not require him to be sober) to see Stacie Conrad, that insanely smart girl from his Music Theory class, standing behind him._

_Stacie follows his line of sight, and sighs. "They're, like, totally disgusting, aren't they? There's probably a landfill in New Jersey where they stash all the surplus cuteness those two produce. It's getting excessive."_

_Jesse laughs. "Yeah, but you could probably fuel a coast-to-coast road trip with how oblivious Beca is."_

_Stacie gives a dramatic gasp, slapping a hand against her chest, possibly a little lower than entirely necessary for the desired effect. "Fucking tell me about it. I have to be around the two of them for, like, three hours every day. It's literally giving me hives. I can't take it. I'm too young and beautiful, I don't deserve this kind of pain."_

_They talk for a while, and he's not sure but he_ thinks _he agrees to join some kind of girl gang._

_Stacie is cool and offers to partner with him for their next Music Theory assignment, but the gleam in her eye suggests to him they'll be doing less of the research and more match-making scheming. Which probably shouldn't be okay with him, but it totally is. Whatever. He's drunk._

 

Jesse knocks on Beca's dorm room door, and it takes a couple of tries before she answers, but he's used to that. Her headphones usually mean she couldn't hear a nuclear bomb if it went off.

"Hey there," she smirks, but it's closer to a genuine smile than he's accustomed to seeing and it kinda throws him off a bit.

"Whatcha doing?" he asks, inviting himself in with an answering smile. She shrugs, but it doesn't look like the weight of the world rests on her tiny, tattooed shoulders for once.

"Just mixing," she offers. "As much as I'd love to be ambushed into a movie marathon, Jess, Chloe's going to be here in -"

She's cut off by another knock on the door, and she takes a moment to school her face before answering it. Chloe gives her a small wave and a cute grin that is altogether too carefree for a senior approaching the first exams of the year.

"Hey, Jesse!" she calls. "I can come back later if you're busy," she adds to Beca with a small furrow in her brow.

"Um, no, not busy. Jesse just came by the return a CD, that's all." Beca shoots him a look that is both apologetic and pleading.

 _Actually,_ he thinks to himself, _Jesse's here to encourage you to sort your shit out, but whatever._

He nods. "Yeah. I was on my way out. Thanks for that Proclaimers disc, by the way. Have fun," he says, giving Beca what he hopes is an encouraging nod as he shuffles past the two girls and out into the hallway. "Beca and I are going to get coffee. Wanna join?" Chloe suggests, and he can't for the life of him tell if she genuinely wants him to come or is just being polite. Luckily, however, he graduated Wing Man school with honours, and he doesn't even need the widened eyes and fractional shake of the head Beca is subtly offering him.

"Nah, I've gotta get back to my dorm. Benji and I are having a Star Wars marathon." That's totally a lie, but they should definitely organise one. And while lying to Chloe is like glaring at a puppy, even if it's a white lie, Beca's owe-ya-one expression is worth it. He can't help but smile at the knowledge that he's got her backed into a proverbial corner, now, because you don't beg one of your best friends not to go out with you and your other best friend unless there's something going on. Which he knows there absolutely is, but maybe this will force Beca to finally acknowledge it.

He promised Stacie at the party that he'd keep her updated on "Bechloe" (she and Benji had explained to him that it was an Internet phenomenon to mash names together, and were shocked he'd missed the trend memo) developments. He doesn't want to invade Beca's privacy but he knows she needs all the help she can get, and Stacie is made of sex, science and the absolute best of intentions. He'll send her a quick text when he gets back to the dorm.

"If you're sure," Chloe smiles again, but it's a farewell smile. "Well, I'll see you soon, I'm sure. Come on, Becs."

He smirks because he knows he'd be stabbed multiple times in the throat if he tried giving Beca a cute nickname, and yet mysteriously, Chloe gets away with it. Interesting. Jesse's beginning to think that this runs a little deeper than even he had suspected. It's confirmed, though, when Chloe grabs Beca's hand to lead her off down the hall in search of caffeine, and instead of lurching away and swearing as if she'd been burned, Beca just twines their fingers together and allows herself to be lead along, a small but completely genuine smile on her face. Small enough that perhaps others wouldn't think anything of it, but to him, it stands out like a message in the sky.

And watching them walk away together, he has the kind of moment that they narrate in films, when you know it's crucial and life changing because of the way the score soars and glides, and the camera pans out. He knows, in that second, that Beca has found it. What his sister found in modern French cooking, Benji found in the art of illusion and he found in the endings of movies. Somehow, in a college she didn't want to go to, in a group she didn't want to join, and in a beautiful girl she didn't want to know, Beca has stumbled upon what he likes to call "the best part".


End file.
